"After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success"

After spectacular failures, ordinary success no longer satisfies because the scale of experience has shifted. Failure at high magnitude forces a person to confront risk, ambition, and capability in stark relief; it stretches the imagination and rewrites the measure by which outcomes are judged. Having seen what is at stake and how far one can fall, a modest victory feels like a polite consolation rather than a worthy resolution to the drama already lived.

There is a psychological contrast at work. Vivid setbacks intensify the senses and sharpen self-awareness, making subsequent achievements that lack similar intensity feel flat. The self-story demands symmetry: a fall from a great height asks for an ascent of equal grandeur to restore coherence and dignity. Ordinary success, while pleasant, cannot redeem the scale of the preceding loss; it neither justifies the risks taken nor fulfills the potential disclosed by failing boldly.

There is also a moral dimension. Spectacular failure is often the residue of audacity. It signals that one aimed beyond safety, chose to test limits, and accepted exposure. After that, settling for small, respectable wins can feel like a retreat from courage. The appetite for meaning expands, and with it the threshold for what counts as success. One seeks transformation rather than mere improvement, impact rather than compliance with expectations.

Yet the danger is clear: disdain for ordinary success can curdle into perfectionism or perpetual dissatisfaction. The wiser reading is tension, not rejection. Small wins matter as scaffolding; they gain value when aligned with a larger, risk-honest vision. The dissatisfaction is not with modest progress itself, but with finalizing the journey at a plateau that does not answer the questions failure exposed.

Ultimately, spectacular failure refines ambition. It insists that future triumphs be proportionate to the courage already paid, inviting a life calibrated not to comfort, but to significance.